ATARI BYTES

Remember those great Atari 2600 games? Sure, they were fun to play, but didn't you ever wonder why they needed to call a plumber to take out Donkey Kong? What exactly Yar was seeking revenge against? What the Defender was defending? What was making those robots so Beserk? Me too! ATARI BYTES is a game review podcast like no other. On this show, we take a BYTE (get it?) out of a classic Atari 2600 game and see if the story within the game BYTES (now do you get it?) us back.

Remember those great Atari 2600 games? Sure, they were fun to play, but didn't you ever wonder why they sent a plumber to take out Donkey Kong? What Yar was seeking revenge against? What the Defender was defending or why those robots went Berserk? Me too! ATARI BYTES is a game review podcast like no other. We review not just the game play, but the STORY within these classic games. We take a BYTE out of the story (get it?) and see if that story BYTES us back (now do you get it?).

In episode 81, we DIG deep into yet another game and leave no stone, worm, or dog turd unturned until we've DUG up the truth about the 1982 Namco classic DIG DUG. If we hit the center of the Earth, we'll tell Jules Verne you said "hi".

This week on the podcast, we're excited to offer another Conversation Bytes segment. This time, we've got Eoin Marron, the artist drawing the new "Centipede" comic from Dynamite Entertainment.

Centipede is a classic 1982 arcade shooter and a favorite among Atari fans. The game about a giant, rampaging centipede, angry, jumping spiders, and mushrooms galore already got the comics treatment via a pack-in comic from DC in the '80s. THAT story gave us little Oliver, magic wands and wizards. We don't want to spoil anything for you, but we can assure you the new "Centipede" is NOT your father's (Or brother's. Or your) Centipede comic. Less engaging in whimsical hijinks; more being hell bent on revenge.

(By the way, you can hear my CENTIPEDE game review and story within the game in episode 11 of this very podcast.)

Thanks again to Eoin Marron for giving me a little of his time. I really enjoyed talking to him. I think you'll enjoy listening. So do that thing right NOW!

If you learn only one thing from ATARI BYTES episode 79, let it be this: Bears who live in crystal castles, shouldn't throw magic gems.

Wait. That's not it.

Actually, throwing magic gems is exactly what you should do in this 1983 Atari port of the proto-3D arcade adventure game CRYSTAL CASTLES. I mean, how else is Bentley Bear going to defeat the evil witch Berthilda? With an earnest heart-to-heart over steaming lattes?*

*I'm totaling waiting for someone to make a steaming latte adventure homebrew game.

Why is Bentley the only bear for this job? Did Fozzie, Yogi and Smokey say no? Is crystal really the ideal building material for a castle? So many questions...

In episode 77, we find out whether the Pac-Apple falls far from Ghost Tree. Then we gobble it up because....mmm, pac-apples.

We're playing JR. PAC-MAN, the 1984 son-of-a-classic-arcade icon. Does the game surpass it's predecessor? Or is it an embarrassing disappointment to the family? Then we dig into whether Jr. Pac has daddy issues or if he's his own Pac.

EPISODE 76: SPIDER-MAN swings in on a web to fill your earholes with sticky podcasting fluid. We're playing the 1982 Parker Brothers adventure in honor of SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING being in theaters right now. (As this episode drops.)

The Green Goblin has planted a super bomb in the high voltage tower atop a skyscraper. Will Spidey defuse the bombs in time? Will the Green Goblin get away? What exactly does the high voltage tower do? Who should get fired for signing off on the design choice of having a high voltage tower so accessible to people who want to scale it?

These questions and more will have you climbing the walls like...well, like you-know-who.

EPISODE 74: SKY JINKS. In this 1982 high-flying adventure from Activision, you need cat-like reflexes (though, ironically, felines are notoriously bad pilots. They prefer train travel.) to bank left and right around those pylons while dodging trees and hot-air balloons. Sure, you want to finish the time trials in record time, but, hey, don't let all those fast, high-altitude turns make you queasy or anything...

Episode 73 is a heapin' second helping of River Raid-esque goodness. RIVER RAID II from 1988 takes what we loved about the original Activision legend and overlays an early era flight simulator. Does the game soar or crash and burn?

Hmmm. 1980s. Fighter jets screaming overhead, performing death defying maneuvers as the sexy pilots complete their mission while trading witty banter. Does any of that sound familiar? Let's discuss...

EPISODE 70 invites you to be a star and to get your RAID on! STAR RAIDERS is here!

This 1982 Atari game was the first to utilize the space-age video touch pad peripheral. It was also the last. That may give you a clue how this game is going to go.

Speaking of firsts doubling as lasts, listen to this episode closely for the first appearance of my wife - Mrs. Bytes - on the show. She was thrilled to do it...so thrilled that this will also probably be her last appearance.

Yes, sir, this episode is one for the record books. Join us, won't you?

One day at the Atari Labs in the 1970s, they looked at Breakout and said, "Yeah, this is pretty good. But we can make it better. We have the technology. We can make the paddle smaller. The balls bouncier. The colors colorier. And we can make 'colorier' a word too. We're Atari and there is zero chance we'll implode in a video game crash just a few years hence."

The result of this bravado was 1980(?)'s Atari game SUPER BREAKOUT. Is the game indeed super? Well, no. No, it's not. Spoilers hurt sometimes.

But this episode definitely is SUPER. I'm wearing the cape and codpiece to prove it.

After an unplanned week off at the exotic locale of my local hospital, ATARI BYTES is back. And we promise you, this episode is worth the wait!

First, we talk about the 1982 Atari legend SWORDQUEST: EARTHWORLD, the first in a famously unfinished series of games and pack-in comics at the center of a contest that also went unfinished, courtesy of the video game crash.

Then, after the game stuff, you can hear my conversation with Chad Bowers and Chris Sims. (Thanks again, guys!) They are well-known comics writers on a lot of big things - Deadpool, Guardians of the Galaxy, X-Men, to name but a few - and are now writing an all-new SWORDQUEST - inspired comic series for Dynamite Entertainment. Preview issue Zero just dropped on May 3 at the sweet, low, retro price of twenty-five cents!

And by IT, we mean the 1978 Atari original BREAKOUT. It's a game about smashing bricks and...well, smashing more bricks.

And providing the ying to our gaming yang, we also have a Lego correspondent in the studio giving a play-by-play of his assembly of a stack of Lego bricks into...well, you'll just have to listen to find out.

Join us for episode 65 featuring the debut of what we expect will become a recurring segment on the show: Conversation Bytes!

Our guinea pig guest for this new interview segment is Scott Rhoades, fiction author and longtime writer of technical manuals - including manuals for games like BasketBrawl and Shanghai on the Atari 7800 and the Lynx during a stint with Atari in the 1980s and '90s. Thanks for chatting with me, Scott!

Our subject this week is: FLAG CAPTURE, a flag-ship game (see what I did there?) for Atari, being one of the first eleven games released in 1978. You and an opponent race across the field of play, striving to be the first to "capture" the "flag" and which point...well, not much happens.

Is this a pirate game? I don't know, but it sure feels like a pirate game. Jolly Roger and all that? Mostly, I just want an excuse to wear an eye patch and say "arr" a lot. As if anyone needs an excuse for that sexy and totally not annoying behavior.

My thanks to Kevin McLeod at Incompetech.com for creative commons use of his songs "Reformat", "Pinball Spring" and "Take a Chance."

Ahh! Baseball! The smell of the grassy outfield and the dusty infield. Does Atari's 1978 appeal to the Louisville Slugger in all of us score a HOME RUN or is it the sporting equivalent of AMIDAR? (We're never going to forgive that game for wasting our time.) Head down to your digital ballpark and find out!

We're taking another spin through the time vortex and jumping out in the era of the Atari 7800 this week to play the 1986 iconic Atari game ROBOTRON 2084. If you're one of the few who hasn't heard of or played this legendary game, this might help: just imagine this is an even MORE dystopian version of the world set out in George Orwell's novel 1984. It's no surprise that Orwell might be interested in writing about robots. Orwell, famously, was a cyborg novelist.*

For all you haters who think video games rot the mushy brains of impressionable youth, the 1978 Atari game BRAIN GAMES is for you. It's like a console version of the classic handheld games Simon and Merlin without the portability. Or the bright colors. Or the fun.

Doing its part to foster a generation of drug free, sex free, non-fun-having gamers, playing BRAIN GAMES is like being the 1980s teen our parents dreamed of all over again!

Sorry for all the thoughtless Wargames: Dead Code spoilers this week! You've been warned. (Settle down, you've never heard of that movie before now either.)

This made it a bit difficult to play this week's game NIGHT DRIVER, the 1980 game from Atari. I pretty much crashed into everything, then just reset the game and pretty much acted as if nothing happened. It's kind of like what Congress does.

This week on the podcast, we have a 1983 Parker Bros. game about looting ancient Egyptian ruler King Tut's tomb. The game is called TUTANKHAM, and is apparently so good, you won't have time to put the last "en" on the name before you must rush off to play it.

Do we agree? More importantly, what stories has the mysterious ancient tomb left to tell?